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There has been a significant overhaul in the University of Oregon football program over the past two months.
Mario Cristobal’s departure to Miami altered basically the entire coaching staff, and a sea of transfers – both in and out of the program – has done the same to the Ducks roster under new coach Dan Lanning.
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Perhaps no position group has undergone as much alteration as the running back room, which will be almost entirely different when the 2022 season begins in September.
CJ Verdell and Travis Dye were the stalwarts last season, but they are both out the door to the NFL and USC, respectively. Meanwhile, backup Trey Benson is headed to Florida State, leaving Seven McGee and Sean Dollars (who each almost transferred themselves) as well as Byron Cardwell as the lone returners with game experience in the backfield.
That put pressure on Lanning to secure a high-level running back on national signing day, and he did not disappoint. Four-star running back Jordan James flipped his commitment from Georgia and announced he is joining the Ducks, giving Oregon the No. 16 ranked back in the class of 2022.
“I’m pretty jacked to get Jordan [James],” Lanning said in his post-signing day press conference. “I’m pretty pumped about him.”
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James joins McGee, Cardwell, and Dollars in what will be an athletic, but very inexperienced, running back group next year. While the transfer portal could yield another body (or two), for now, it looks like Lanning will have to make do with the group that he has — a challenge he is very much embracing.
“I think that we can be creative in our approach,” Lanning said. “We have some talent at other positions obviously, on offense, and we’ll use guys in a variety of ways. You know, even if that means putting a wide-out in the backfield or moving people around, I think we can do that here. But we’re always going to look to enhance the backfield. I feel really great about the guys that we have in that group right now, and Jordan obviously enhances that group moving forward.”
Oregon is certainly no stranger to RB/WR hybrid players, a la De’Anthony Thomas or even McGee last year, but it will be interesting to see how a new coach — a defensive coach at that — chooses to handle this enticing but unproven backfield in his first full season.
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